Thirty-Four
It’s common knowledge nothing brings a sense of calm like the smell of an infant. So when I found the perfect, black-haired
little girl with a strawberry birthmark on her neck lying in a white crib in the office down the hall, I scooped her up and
started sniffing the top of her head like a wayward teen huffing gas.
Once I’d returned to the living room and handed the precious cargo to Miranda, she snuggled the babe to her chest and sighed.
I recognized it. The relief and wonder at finally having a baby (or in my case, babies, plural) after knowing for so long
it might never happen. The infant made a happy gurgling noise. Glancing around the room, I spotted a baby swing tucked alongside
the couch. I hadn’t noticed it in the scuffle. I was starting to feel whiplashed.
“Miranda,” I said, “whose baby is this?”
As I went to work stanching the fresh bleeding from Little Sister’s ear, a story of longing I knew too well flooded out of
Miranda. After what she’d done to me, I didn’t want to listen or sympathize. But I was curious about where this baby had come
from. And I needed a minute to think, to figure out my next steps, so I listened. More than anything in this world, Miranda
said, she’d wanted to be a mother. I remembered that yearning, the soul ache for a child. Even had I truly known how much
cleaning up of vomit and poo, maternal anxiety, financial insecurity, and eventual twin bickering motherhood would entail,
I still would’ve wanted it.
But like me, Miranda had fertility issues.
Round after round of heartbreaking, expensive IVF treatments, complete with hormone injections that would’ve turned even a young Emma Watson into an unhinged weeping crazy lady, had walloped Miranda’s body, spirit, and bank account.
For once in her life, her mother had actually been supportive, saying the right things, being there for her.
“I literally couldn’t have done it without her!
” Miranda said. Belinda Carson was unwavering in her support, an actual dream mother, right up until Miranda and her husband decided to adopt, at which point Miranda’s mother turned mean again, ranting about the insanity of raising a child from an unknown bloodline.
Miranda had soldiered on, wading through mountains of red tape and expenses.
Then, ten days ago, a beautiful baby girl was discovered on the doorstep of an Airbnb shaped like an oversized potato off Highway 84.
The twenty-eight-foot fake spud had had a first life as a promotional tool for the Idaho Potato Commission.
The origins of the three-day-old baby—whom CPS workers had nicknamed Tater Tot—were more mysterious.
The infant was placed into emergency foster care, but Miranda had immediately petitioned to foster and adopt the baby.
“Did you ever read that Shel Silverstein book about the circle that was missing a piece and went around looking for it?” Miranda
said. “As soon as I held Tater Tot, I knew I’d found my missing piece, that we were meant to be together. I felt like I was
born to take care of her.”
“You don’t have to get all trad wife about it,” I said. But my volcanic anger had started to cool. The appearance of Tater
Tot had turned my rage into something more complicated. “So tell me why you murdered that creep and tried to pin it on me.”
I thought she might backpedal, but new motherhood had clearly left her raw as a skinless, boneless chicken thigh. Her face
crumpled and she told me everything. On that notorious Sunday, she’d gotten the call that she could pick Tater Tot up in a
few days. She spent the evening hunched over her laptop at Caffeina, furiously trying to get ahead on her casework.
“I’d parked behind Huckleberry’s because Caffeina’s lot was full.
When I headed back to my car, I saw this guy,” Miranda said.
“He was—well, he had his pants down a little and his butt backed up to the open trunk of a blue muscle car.” She paused and looked sick.
“Your muscle car. But I didn’t know that then. ”
“Ah-ha!” I said. “So he did steal my keys!” I paused. “But what do you mean he had his butt backed up to my car?”
“I think,” she said, wrinkling her nose in distaste. “I think maybe he was trying to take a dump in the trunk?”
“Ugh!” I cried. But it made sense. I explained Connor had probably spiked my drink with Ambien and nabbed my keys. When his
plan to lure me out of the club failed, he must’ve decided to take a revenge dookie in my trunk instead.
“As soon as I walked under a motion light, we recognized each other,” Miranda said. “From this CPS case I investigated a few
months ago.”
“Wait! You’d already met Connor? And this dog?” I hadn’t believed Alice when she said Miranda and Little Sister were previously
acquainted. But maybe she’d been right.
“That’s actually Connor’s pit bull?” Miranda said. “Tilly, why do you have his dog?”
“I went to his house looking for clues. The dog was stuck there. Alone. Starving. Come on now. Tell me about this CPS case.”
“Okay, okay. So Connor had a girlfriend named Korielle.”
Where had I heard that name? There was too much coming at me.
“Korielle’s son told his preschool teacher his mom’s boyfriend beat her up,” Miranda continued. “That’s why CPS was called.
I met Connor and the dog on a visit to Korielle’s. Later, she admitted Connor was physically abusive. Controlling. A total
loser. CPS policy is to take kids out of violent homes.” Tater Tot let out a little cry and Miranda jostled and soothed her.
“So a mom has a bad boyfriend she can’t get rid of and CPS yanks her kids?” I said, suddenly angry again.
“CPS policies are beyond terrible,” Miranda agreed. “I realize that. Korielle was a really good mom. And she wanted to break up with Connor. So I told her to use me as an excuse.”
Then I remembered. Korielle rhymes with L’Oréal. “Connor was texting with a woman named Korielle!” I said. “That’s where I’ve
heard the name.” I pulled out my phone and showed Miranda the picture I’d snapped of the framed photo on Connor’s desk. A
smiling Connor had his arm slung around a woman with bleached hair. A sad-looking little boy stood beside her. I’d thought
the woman was Baylee.
“That’s her,” Miranda said. “That’s Korielle.”
“So Connor thought of you as the meddling caseworker who made his girlfriend break up with him,” I mused. And he thought of
Korielle as the one who got away.
Little Sister was trying to wriggle away from me, but I kept two fingers under his collar and the tea towel below his torn
ear. Not that I cared if the dog bled on Miranda’s floral rug. I wouldn’t be surprised if a 1980s Laura Ashley called wanting
that rug back.
“You got it,” Miranda said. “In the alley that night, Connor had a big goose egg on his forehead. And he seemed like, kind
of out of it? When he saw me in the alley, he staggered at me. Making this wheezing sound. And his face—it was like a monster.”
“Jesus,” I said. If Idaho Connor had attacked me in a dark alley, I’d think he looked like a monster too. “What do you mean,
though?”
“He was like this!” Miranda contorted her face, mouth wide open and twisted, one eye squinted shut.
“Then he was making these horrible rasping noises and trying to push me into the trunk of his car. Head first. At least I thought it was his car. There were scissors. Like right in front of my face. In the trunk, right? So I grabbed them and managed to get him in the leg. I spun around and got him again before he knocked the scissors out of my hand. Somehow I pulled my taser out of my purse. I always thought it was so insane my mom made me carry it.” She laughed, a little hysterically, and took a big sniff of the top of Tater Tot’s head, as if to ground herself.
“Tasing him—” She shuddered, and I knew she wouldn’t say more.
“He toppled forward and I ran to my car. But when I looked back. He was . . . he was . . . His top half was in the trunk, his legs hanging out. I could tell he wasn’t moving.
I went back and he was . . . he was dead. ”
“Dead,” I said flatly. “You think the taser really killed him?”
“Oh, he was dead, all right,” Miranda said.
“Tasers can kill people,” I said. A social worker had been tased to death by the cops at a routine traffic stop in Culver City a few
years back. Still, I didn’t think people died of being tased that often. “But you said he was wheezing?”
“It was weird,” Miranda agreed.
Having just discovered Connor’s killer, I wasn’t eager to convince her she hadn’t actually done the deed. Still, I wondered
if there was more to the story than Miranda knew. After all, I still didn’t know where I was for seven hours or how I ended
up in the alley of Huckleberry’s at four in the morning wearing Connor’s vest. “Any chance you saw a teal vest lying around?”
I asked.
She shook her head. “Why?”
“No reason. Never mind. So you lifted up his legs and stuffed him in my trunk.”
She nodded, weepy and trembling. “I wiped the keys and tossed them in the dumpster. But I promise: I had no idea it was your
car. I would have never. Can I ask?” she said with real trepidation. “Is he . . . is he still there?”
“No,” I said sharply. The corpse was in my backyard. Where he was my problem, when he should’ve been Miranda’s. “But for god’s
sake, why didn’t you call the police?”
“I’m in the process of trying to adopt a baby!” Miranda said. “And then suddenly my file says I tased a guy to death behind
a strip club? Even if I don’t get charged with manslaughter, I lose my chance at keeping Tater Tot. One baby. Is that too
much to ask? When every piece of trash on this earth has at least two without trying.”
“Are you seriously calling me trash?”
“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean you.”
I sucked my teeth. But it was starting to sink in that Miranda hadn’t intended to do me harm.
Miranda explained that when she drove by me the next day, after seeing me in the co-op, she’d recognized my LuvLife plates